Fightback saves Cardiff school

Lansdowne school demo, Cardiff, photo Socialist Party Wales

CAMPAIGNERS FROM Lansdowne Primary School in Canton, Cardiff are celebrating. Eight months of hard, well-organised campaigning by parents, staff and community members has saved their school - fighting back has won results! The victory is a huge boost to schools like Llanedeyrn, Cefn Onn and Llanrumney, which still lie under the axe.

The campaign forced school closures to the top of the agenda in recent council elections. Socialist Alternative candidates standing under the Save Our Schools banner gained respectable votes and Plaid Cymru were under pressure to oppose school closures on their 'home turf' in west Cardiff.

Lansdowne school demo, Cardiff, photo Socialist Party Wales

Plaid has now joined forces with the Liberal Democrats on the council executive. Under the power-sharing agreement, Cantonian High School will also remain open. A new school for overcrowded Welsh-language primary Ysgol Treganna, which would have moved into Lansdowne, will be built. But the school closures programme has not been withdrawn.

These developments expose local Labour councillors' lies. Tied to the Welsh Assembly agenda that drives the closures, they claimed building a new Welsh-language school was impossible without closing an English-speaking school.

Cardiff school demo in 2006, photo Socialist Party Wales

Plaid, which faked 'left' in opposition, now either has to administer closures in Cardiff, or oppose its own party members in the Welsh Assembly government coalition with Labour.

Canton has won its battle for now, but campaigners expressed sympathy with other schools still on the closures list. People in other parts of the city will ask how Plaid can close schools in their area while saving those in their own backyard.

Lansdowne school demo, Cardiff, photo Socialist Party Wales

Socialist Party members, who supported the schools campaigns from the beginning, are calling for so-called "surplus places" to be redistributed amongst all Cardiff's schools, to lower class sizes and raise standards. We call for funding arrangements to be changed to allow this.

Colossal pressure has diverted the main parties from attacks in some parts of Cardiff, but until a new party acting in the interests of ordinary people is created, campaigners will have to keep fighting school closures and job cuts in education.